


(Un)happy Housewives of Suburbia

by Anonymous



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, F/F, I'll add more tags as the story progresses, Natasha's POV (First-person), Slow Burn, and change the rating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-01 17:01:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12709125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Natasha Stark is a housewife who dislikes the boredom and monotony of her life while her husband, Tony, is at work. Cue the arrival of Wanda Spade, a shy newcomer to the quietness of suburbia.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> just a few heads up: everyone is super ooc and idk much about 1950s housewife culture lol so there are probably some things in here that are inaccurate or whatever. sorry
> 
> i may have missed some spelling, grammar, and other mistakes in this so feel free to point them out

It was normal for my days to begin at 6:30 in the morning, when Tony, my husband, came into our bedroom to give me a quick kiss goodbye before he left for work. I had to remind myself sometimes to consider myself lucky – Tony was rich, though most of it was his family’s money, and unlike most men, who treated their “trophy wives” (which is what I knew I was for him) like they were nothing more than slaves and arm ornaments, Tony at least tried to spend time with me and treated me with kindness – but even with the comfort that Tony’s inheritance and paycheck provided, I was never happy where I was. Our spark had been small to begin with – I was reluctant to date him, and even more reluctant to marry him – and then, nearing our eleventh wedding anniversary, it seemed as though that spark was entirely burnt out, and we were just so used to the routine of our life that we did it automatically, without thinking about it or feeling anything.

Tony would always come into the bedroom, still struggling to finish his tie (something he never seemed to be able to get the hang of, no matter how many times I had tried to teach him) and then not-so-quietly walk around to my side of the bed. Just like every other morning, I would sit up just enough for him to kiss my forehead (I never allowed him to kiss me on the mouth if either of us hadn’t brushed our teeth yet) and mumble, “Bye, honey. See you when I get home,” and then he would be back out of the room. As I worked on waking up fully, I could hear him putting his shoes on and walking to the little desk by our front door to fetch his keys out of the bowl that we kept on it. By the time I was out of bed and had my slippers on, he was already out the door, in his car, and backing out of our driveway.

My own routine would then begin. I would make my way into our kitchen, fix a small breakfast for myself (I was also lucky enough to have married a man who wasn’t the kind to demand that I have his breakfast hot and ready for him when he woke up) before I would get dressed so I could start my day. Usually this consisted of going out to the grocery store to pick up anything we needed, then running a few errands before I would come back to the house to put everything I bought where it needed to go, and then I would be off again to whatever club was meeting up that day.

Mondays and Wednesdays were Bridge Club days, Thursdays were Tupperware (or whatever new gadget was being marketed to housewives that week) Parties, while Thursdays were occasionally Sewing Club days, though usually they were “free” days. Fridays were _officially_ free days, but that was only on paper, as every woman in the neighborhood wanted to have friendly get-togethers at the end of the week, each and every week. I always viewed Fridays as unnecessary – just a day of the week designated to kill time, just for the sake of killing time – because we all saw each other throughout the week at the other club meetings, and more often than not we saw each other at the grocery store or the library or any other public place, but I went to every activity anyways, just to get away from the quietness of the house.

It wasn’t that clubs were intolerable – while I couldn’t care less about bridge or whatever thing some man had invented specifically for the Happy Housewife of 1950s Suburbia, but even I had to admit that it was nice to see other people besides my husband. Attending club activities was better than staying home all day and waiting for Tony to get back from work. I guess I had to be grateful that I married someone who hadn’t insisted we move out to the country after our wedding, where I would be far away from anybody else and forced to spend my days alone in an empty house, with little more to do than wait for him to get home.

The women in the  clubs were pleasant to be around, of course. I got along with them, although I only considered myself to be “friends” with a few. I had known them for years – one woman, Peggy Rogers, had gone to the same school as me. She was a Carter back then, and we had spent much of our teen years planning our lives so that we could always be close to one another. She was the person who introduced me to Tony, and it was largely because of her that I even said yes to him when he asked me out on our first date. For many years, I had considered her to be my best friend – although at the time, our friend circle consisted of us and two other girls, Dottie and Pepper, who also lived in the neighborhood and were members of the clubs, Peggy was the first one who had taken the time to befriend me when we were children and so I always viewed her as being the best of the bunch – but by the summer of 1952, I could tell that our friendship was nearing its end. I always thought that the main cause of the rift between us was my attitude: while the other women, including Peggy, fully embraced the life of a housewife and even enjoyed it, I was just completely unhappy with it. I was out-of-place with them, bored and unsatisfied with my days that consisted of little more than errands, groceries, and club meetings, all so that I wouldn’t be stuck in the house all day.

Summertime was always the most energetic and loudest time of the year. Because of the warm weather, most of the husbands would be at work for longer house – including my Tony, though I didn’t know why he felt like he needed to work later in the summer, considering that his job wasn’t an outdoor job and the weather didn’t affect his productivity, but I didn’t dare question him – which gave us women more time with each other. Those who had little ones at home would bring them along for club meetings then, where all of the kids would be rounded up into whoever’s backyard so they could play outside while the Moms, Moms-to-be, and in some cases, like mine, Not Moms stayed inside and attended our club activities.

With children running around, playing together and being loud and hyperactive, the Moms of our clubs – like Peggy, whose son Thomas had recently turned eight; Dottie, whose twin girls Anna and Alice would proudly tell anyone, even if they didn’t ask, that they were six-and-three-quarters years old; Estelle, who had a four-year-old little girl named Mabel who was so shy and quiet that she never wanted to play with the other kids, preferring instead to sit in Estelle’s lap during our activities, where she wouldn’t so much as make a single peep, making it easy to forget she was most of the time; and Lilly, who was twenty years old and had a two-year-old named Junior and was pregnant with another – would spend most of the time pestering the Childless Wives about when we would be joining the Motherhood Club. For some women, like Helen and Tilly, their lack of children wasn’t something that raised concerns among the Moms: Helen had only been married for a few months, since late-spring, so it was considered reasonable that she wasn’t pregnant yet, while Tilly had managed to luck out by marrying a traveling businessman who seemed to have only stuck around long enough to tie the knot before going off to some faraway place that his job sent him. None of us had ever met him, but Tilly said he existed so nobody would question it. For others, like Betty and Mildred and even Lilly, the conversation had since turned towards when the babies would be born and did they have names picked out yet and were they hoping for a boy or a girl – one of the perks of being pregnant, I was told. Despite already having gone through pregnancy once, Lilly would still get so bubbly and excited whenever she could talk about her own round belly and how much she was hoping for a little sister for Junior.

For a very small few – and by that, I mean only Pepper – the conversation was never directed at her. She had been widowed in 1943, no thanks to the war, and she and her husband had never had a chance to even try. She had moved back in with her parents shortly after that and spent several years mourning for him. We would all pitch in to try and help her cheer up – sending her gift baskets and baked goods and trying (and failing) to get her to come out of the house and spend time with us, thinking that maybe if she was busy doing something other than thinking about her dead husband then maybe she could move on faster – and eventually, all of our hard work paid off. She would never get remarried, but that was okay; being a house _wife_ wasn’t a requirement to be in any of the clubs.

I was one of the few other childless women in the clubs, but because I wasn’t a window or a newlywed, I was frequently targeted with questions about when Tony and I were going to have a baby and if there were problems going on between us. I tried to keep the conversation steered away from myself, tried to keep it directed at somebody else, but I was rarely successful, and one particular Tuesday morning in June was one of the many times I was unlucky enough to be alone in a room with Dottie.

We were in Betty’s living room, waiting for the others to show up, and Dottie was arranging her new Tupperware containers on the little coffee table that Betty’s mother-in-law had given her when she and Mark had gotten married last December. It felt like that was the hundredth Tupperware Party we’d had that year, and I had been burnt out on it long ago, but Dottie was always so excited to show off the new things she’d gotten. I always thought that Tuesdays were her favorite for that simple reason.

“Now, I don’t mean to keep bugging you about this,” she’d said, never taking her eyes off the brand-new bowls, “but honestly, Nat – when are you and Tony going to start having some babies? You two have been married for as long as Peggy and me have, I mean, you should at least have _one_ little ankle-biter running around by now.”

It was the same thing she always said, the same thing she’d been saying to me since just a few months after Tony and I had gotten married back in 1941 – _you should have a baby by now, Natasha, what’s the hold up, honestly it’s not that hard_ – but it still bothered me, just like it would always bother me. I inhaled through my nose and sighed as subtly as I could before answering her. “We’re trying,” I said, as calmly as I always did. It wasn’t a lie, of course – we had been trying since the day we’d gotten married, because children was one of the few things Tony and I _both_ wanted – but I knew that the way I said it made it sound like I was lying. “It just takes some time for some people.”

“It only took James and me two years to get pregnant.” Dottie finally turned around to look at me with an expression on her face that I knew was meant to be concerned, but it came off as mocking to me. “Lilly got pregnant right after her wedding… I just think you should try a little harder, don’t you?”

“We can’t all be like that, Dottie.”

She sighed, as if it pained her to be reminded. “Well, no,” she agreed, “of course not.” She walked around the table to sit beside me on Betty’s couch. “I’m just worried about you, you know,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “A woman our age…” She didn’t finish the sentence. “And, well, Tony’s… I’m sure he wants a baby, doesn’t he?”

I shrugged, but it was mostly an attempt to shake her hand off of me. “Of course he does,” I said, trying my best not to get snappy with her. “I told you, we’re trying. We’re working on it. When it happens, it’ll happen.”

Dottie had a little frown on her face for a moment before she smiled, eyebrows raised and eyes wide. “You know,” she said, sickly sweet, “I heard that they’ve made this tea that’s supposed to help women like you—”

At that moment, Betty’s front door opened and Estelle walked in, holding little Mabel in her arms. “Hey, girls!” she said cheerfully. “I hope you all didn’t start without me.”

I was happy to see her - mostly because she was always a breath of fresh air thanks to her personality, but also partly because her presence was enough to distract Dottie from badgering me any more about children or whatever _tea_ she was going to tell me about.

Dottie stood up from the couch and rushed over to her so she could hug her, arms opened wide to accommodate the inclusion of Mabel. “Of course not!” she said. “We’re just waiting for everybody else to show up.”

Estelle shifted her stance and moved Mabel so that the little girl was propped with her own hip, lessening the strain of holding her. “Hi, Natasha. That’s a cute dress!” she said to me with a smile before looking at Dottie again. She never waited for a _thank you_ or _you're welcome_ whenever she gave or received compliments. “Would it be all right if she stays with me?” she asked, putting a hand on Mabel’s back. “She doesn’t feel like playing today. I think she’s coming down with something.”

Mabel hid her face in the crook of Estelle’s neck, too bashful to look at any of us. I knew that Estelle was probably just making it up that Mabel was sick - the little girl rarely got so much as a mild cold, thanks to Estelle almost obsessively making sure her daughter was never exposed to anything that could make her unwell, and staying with Estelle during meetings was just something that Mabel always did - but Dottie fed into it.

“Oh, of course she can,” Dottie said, motioning for Estelle to sit down on the couch. Estelle took the side chair instead, adjusting Mabel so the girl was sitting on her thighs, feet dangling off one side. Dottie sat back down beside me, smoothing out the bottom of her pale yellow dress. “I’ve got the girls in the nursery until they can come out and play. They’re so excited to see Betty’s baby!”

As if on cue, Betty came waddling into the room then, one hand cupped around her large stomach and the other pressing against her lower back. “I’m just excited to be small again,” she said as she lowered herself down into a chair after waving off Dottie’s help. Before her pregnancy, Betty had always been the best dressed out of all of us, thanks to her near-perfect figure that allowed her to wear just about any dress she wanted and actually look good in it, but as her stomach grew her options in clothing shrank, and at eight months, she had become restricted to oversized dresses that look more like a curtain wrapped around her body and thrown over her shoulders. Her belly was so big it looked like it had to be painful, but she rarely complained about it, too happy to be having a baby of her own after having spent the last seven months watching the other women with their own children.

“Anna says you should name the baby Robert if it’s a boy and Anna if it’s a girl,” Dottie said, smiling.

Betty smiled but shook her head. “I talked to Mark last night,” she said. “You know that we were going to wait until the baby was born to pick a name, but we’ve talked about it and decided last night on Daniel for a boy and Clara for a girl.”

“After your mother?” Estelle asked.

Betty nodded. “I was named after my grandmother, so we figured we could keep up the tradition.”

Dottie’s smile had turned a little stiff, like it was forced. “Oh. Those are good names.”

Betty either didn’t notice the change in Dottie’s tone or she chose to ignore it - which was something we all did rather often. “Mark says he wants a little girl,” she went on.

Estelle hummed thoughtfully. “Frank always said he hoped for a boy,” she said. “What are you hoping for?”

Betty shook her head again. “I don’t have a preference,” she said quickly. “I think it’s foolish to prepare for one when we could just as easily get the other.”

The conversation continued in typical fashion - we talked about Betty’s pregnancy (which could get more than a little uncomfortable - it was an unspoken but known fact that she had been pregnant already on her wedding day, and back then that was something that just wasn’t supposed to happen), and then as the others showed up, it went to Gertrude’s little girls, Mildred’s pregnancy, Lilly’s son and her baby on the way, and so on and so forth until everybody had finally arrived and the party could begin. And then, the part itself went mostly as usual, with Dottie enthusiastically telling us all about the wonderful new bowls she had and how convenient they were. The rest of us sat on the couch or in chairs, listening to her ramble, and occasionally nibbling on the snacks that Mildred’s aging mother had sent for us and sipping the tea that Myrtle had made. It seemed like every few minutes or so the meeting was interrupted by a little one - first, Anna wanted to know if she and Alice could keep a frog they had found in the backyard, and then Thomas fell and needed Peggy to kiss the tiny scrape on his knee, and Mabel needed a nap badly enough that she threw a rare tantrum that forced Estelle to take her to Betty’s nursery and fold some blankets into a makeshift bed and find a pillow for Mabel to lay on for her nap.

Despite all of this, Dottie managed to keep it going until she was finished presenting everything to us, and then the party was over. The cleanup process began with Myrtle and Peggy picking up baby toys and straightening up the living room for Betty. Pepper washed plates and cups while Estelle dried them. Helen cleaned up the lounge while Tilly and Gertrude worked on the back porch. This left me to help Dottie pack up her Tupperware and carry it out to her car.

I was worried that she’d use the opportunity to ask me about kids or Tony again, or maybe finish telling me about the so-called “tea” she had supposedly heard of, but instead, she brought up something else.

“You haven’t been out my way lately, have you?” she asked while she was putting the boxes into the backseat of her car.

“Not recently, no.”

Our neighborhood was one of the few suburban areas that wasn’t a cul-de-sac. I lived closer to the northern entrance of the neighborhood while Dottie’s house was the very last one at the southern end, right at the corner where you could turn left to go to the city or take a right and be headed towards the countryside. The route to town from Dottie’s side was longer and more complicated than it was from my end, where it was practically a straight stretch from the neighborhood to the outskirts of the city, so I very rarely drove out Dottie’s way.

Dottie nodded. “That’s what I thought,” she sighed.

“Why?”

“I know you haven’t come by in a while because you didn’t mention it during the party.”

“Mention what?”

Dottie didn’t say anything for a long moment, instead focusing on making sure her boxes were secured in the backseat so they wouldn’t move around while she was driving. Just as I was about to repeat the question, she finally said: “My neighbors - do you remember them? The ones who lived right next to us.”

“The Hendersons?” I wasn’t sure why she had specified where they had lived; the house that had been across the street from Dottie and James’ had been demolished in 1949 and the lot had remained completely vacant ever since. Her only actual neighbor was the family of nine - a husband and wife and their seven kids - who lived in the house to the left of hers.

“Yes, them. They moved a few weeks ago – don’t ask me why because I haven’t the slightest clue myself - and, well, somebody finally bought the house a few days ago.”

“Oh, really? Do you know who yet?” I wasn’t really that interested, since old neighbors leaving and new ones taking their place was pretty common then as the men went after what they hoped would be better jobs and dragged their families along with them, but for Dottie’s sake, I acted like I was.

“Not yet.” Dottie’s face twisted then, her nose all wrinkled up like it did when she was disgusted by something. “It’s a family, of course - they have a little boy, and I hope they have another munchkin soon, a little girl for Anna and Alice to play with - but there’s just something... different about them.”

“What do you mean?”

She seemed to struggle to find the right word for a moment before finally saying, “I don’t know how to explain it. The man is just... I don't know. James doesn’t like him either."

That last bit made me a little nervous - James had always been a good judge of character, so if he didn’t like someone, it was safe to assume that the person wasn’t a good person. Still, I had to ask, just to be sure: “I’m guessing you haven’t talked to them yet, have you?”

“Well, my goodness, no!” Dottie put a hand on her chest dramatically before stepping closer to me and lowering her voice like she was telling me a secret. “Actually, I brought it up to you because I was thinking maybe _you_ could be the first to meet them.”

I stared at her. “Me?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“You’re better at approaching people than me.”

I was a little surprised that Dottie would say that - she hated admitting that anyone was better at anything than her. “So is Mildred,” I said.

“Yes, but she lives on the other side of town.” Dottie’s face did that thing again, wrinkling up and twisting into something awful. She had always despised what she referred to as “Mildred’s side” because Mildred lived the closest to the colored side of town. We all knew what Dottie felt about them, so we all agreed long ago - while she wasn’t present - to never mention it around her so as to avoid having to listen to another one of her rants about them. As for Mildred, she tried to stay away from Dottie entirely. After Ethel told her about the first rant Dottie went on about the neighborhood next to Mildred’s, shortly after Mildred moved there, Mildred stopped talking to Dottie at club activities and, from what I had heard, whenever she saw her out in town as well.

“What difference does that make?” I asked. “I live away from you, too.”

Dottie gripped my forearm tightly. “Please, Tasha,” she said. “Just talk to them for me.”

I tried to subtly pull my arm away from her. “All right, fine,” I said. Anything to get her to stop bothering me about it.

“Oh, thank you, Natasha!”

“When do you want me to do it?”

Dottie was decent enough to look apologetic as she said, “Tomorrow? After Bridge Club, of course.”

Of course.


	2. Chapter 2

Wednesday was dreadfully hot. The Bridge Club meeting was held at Ethel’s house rather than Dottie’s because Ethel’s husband was one of the few who were rich enough to afford the decent air conditioning units, the ones that could cool down the entire house and _keep_ it cool. Everybody brought their kids again, but they were instructed to stay inside and play because it was simply too hot for them to be outside any longer than it took for them to get out of their mothers’ cars and walk into the house. A couple of people were missing from the meeting – Estelle was absent because Mabel really was sick, and Betty was present for the first ten minutes or so but ultimately left early because of the pressure that the baby was putting on her back. Aside from that, the meeting went how it normally went: we separated into groups of five or six, seated around circular tables, and played our games until the meeting was over and the winners of each group were announced; the next Monday, the winners would play against each other at one table while the rest of us split up into groups again; there would never be a prize for the winner, because the whole purpose of the club was to have fun, and no one was willing to spend money on a prize anyways.

My table had consisted of four people, including myself: Dottie, Margaret, and Ethel. Because I didn’t care much for the game, I didn’t put any effort into actually playing it, and everybody knew that I wouldn’t be the winner that day – or any other day, for that matter. Margaret ended up being the winner, and just moments after it was announced, I tried to make my escape, hoping that I could get out of there before Dottie managed to pull me aside and get me alone again.

As I was trying to fast-walk as subtly as I could out the door and to my car, I could hear Dottie following me.

“Tasha!” I could hear the _click-clack_ of her two-inch heels as she rushed down the driveway after me. “Hold on a second.”

I slowed down a little but kept walking. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, Dot,” I called over my shoulder.

“Don’t forget to stop by my way!” Dottie was still following me down the sidewalk, and it took me a moment to realize she wasn’t actually _following me_ ; her car was parked right behind mine along the curb.

“I won’t, Dottie,” I said, barely managing to keep the exasperation I felt out of my tone. “Why do you think I’m in a hurry?”

“I was just making sure,” Dottie said sweetly.

We said goodbye to each other, and Dottie gave me one last “confidence booster” as she liked to call them – _you’re so nice, Tasha, I’m sure you’ll get along great with them and then you can tell me all about them –_ and then I got in my car and started off in the direction of her house so I could meet the newcomers for her. Dottie hadn’t given me much information about her new neighbors, largely because she didn’t know anything about them herself – all she knew was that they were a family of three and she thought they were “odd.” I had essentially agreed to go in blind for her, and I had no real strategy of approaching them.

I stopped at my house to pick up something for a housewarming gift – I didn’t have any time to prepare a real gift, so all I could find was an old vase that I hadn’t used since I stopped maintaining my flower garden several years ago. It embarrassed me and made me feel foolish carrying it around, but it was all I had. When I had first moved into the neighborhood with Tony, our neighbors had given us gifts, so I felt that it was the least I could do for this family, even though they weren’t actually _my_ neighbors. I knew Dottie wouldn’t give them a gift, anyways.

As I drove to Dottie’s house, I worried about where I would park, since Dottie hadn’t mentioned James or his schedule, so I wasn’t sure if he would be home or not. When I could see their house, I saw that his car wasn’t in the driveway, thankfully. I parked my own car there, silently hoping that he wouldn’t come home unannounced and see me there. He was a nice man – I often thought he was _too_ nice for his own good – but I still didn’t want to inconvenience him by having my car taking up space in his driveway.

Through the passenger side window, I could see that the house next door didn’t have any blinds or curtains up yet. I could see into the house, but I could just barely make out the shapes of boxes in the rooms, waiting to be unpacked. It looked as though the new owners hadn’t bothered to unpack much of anything, actually, which I thought was a little odd since they had been there for a days by then – surely they should have had everything, or at least most of their belongings unpacked and where they were supposed to go already.

Besides the unopened boxes the house looked empty – I didn’t see a child running around, nor could I see any adults in the home, either. The driveway was also empty, and I worried that they weren’t even home and I’d have to come back some other time. I figured I’d go ahead and at least try, telling myself that if I left without at least knocking on the door it would have been a waste of time, so I got out of my car and walked down Dottie’s driveway to the street (I had always hated crossing other peoples’ lawns) and then up the new neighbors’ driveway. I tried to muster up as much courage as I could while I walked, feeling rather uncharacteristically nervous for some reason, but as I got closer to their front door I didn’t feel very brave at all.

There was a little button for their doorbell right beside the doorframe, but out of habit I knocked first. When there was no response to that, I rang the doorbell a few times and listened to it dinging from inside the house. As I waited for someone to answer, I glanced down at the pathetic-looking little vase in my hands and felt the sudden strong urge to flee. There was no way I could call that thing a housewarming gift, I thought. Who does that?

Just as I was about to finally talk myself into hurrying back to my car and making a break for it, the wooden door opened, revealing a small, dark-haired woman. I wasn’t very tall myself – about 5’7” without heels on – but I had chosen to wear my tallest heels that day for Bridge Club, and I felt like I was towering over her. She eyeballed me cautiously.

“Can I help you?” she asked slowly.

“Welcome to the neighborhood!” I said cheerfully, putting on a smile that I just knew made me look like I was out of my mind. I held out the vase, hoping she would just take it without actually looking at it. “I brought you this little housewarming gift.”

The woman took a single glance down at the vase and then back up at me. “Thank you,” she said, but she didn’t move to take it. “I, um… I don’t have anything to give you in return—”

I shook my head quickly. “Oh, no,” I said. “This is a _gift_! You can just have it. You don’t owe me anything.” I held it out to her again, as if I could make her take it this time.

“Oh.” She finally reached forward and took the vase from me, but I could tell, even with the smile on her face, that she was uncomfortable.

I smiled back at her awkwardly, wanting nothing more than to get out of there and go home. “Well, like I said, welcome to the neighborhood,” I said. “I’m Natasha Stark. I live… quite a bit down the street, but I saw that you’d moved in so I just thought I’d say hello.”

“I’m Wanda Shade. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Your neighbors on this side,” I pointed towards Dottie’s house, “are Mister James Barnes and his wife, Dottie. Don’t be afraid to talk to them. They’d love to meet you, I’m sure! And across the street is Miss Maude Wilson. She’s nice, too. I’m sure they’ll all give you a warm welcome if you take the time to introduce yourself.” I felt like that was the wrong thing to say but it was too late.

Thankfully, Wanda didn’t react to it. She just nodded and said, “Okay. Thank you.”

We stood there awkwardly for a few more moments, neither of us looking at each other or saying anything, until finally, she broke the silence.

“I still have so much left to unpack,” Wanda said, making one of those not-quite-a-laugh sounds, the kind that people make when they’re uncomfortable. “My husband and I are so far behind on everything. It’s been pretty hectic around here. I really should get back to unpacking everything, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, of course!” I said, waving one hand as if to brush off her apology. “I don’t want to keep you long. It was lovely meeting you. Have a nice day!”

“You, too.”

She closed the door before she was even finished saying the words.

~*~*~*~

“Well? Did you talk to them?” Dottie whisper-shouted into the phone that evening. She had called me at around 4:45, a little later than she normally did because Alice had a meltdown earlier that afternoon and practically destroyed their living room. Dottie had spent almost three hours cleaning and apparently called me the moment she finished.

“Her name is Wanda,” I said. “She said her last name is Shade, but she didn’t tell me her husband’s name.”

“Oh, so they _are_ married?” I could almost hear Dottie placing her hand over her chest, and I knew she had to have had a look of relief on her face. “But goodness, Natasha, did you really _ask_ her?”

I was a little offended by that. “Why _would_ I, Dottie? That’s a little rude, don’t you think?”

Dottie laughed, the same laugh she always gave whenever she thought she’d said something silly. “I don’t know why I thought you did,” she said. “You’d never do something so bold. I’m just so glad she’s not shacking up with a man she’s not married to.”

I rolled my eyes and had to physically stop myself from sighing into the receiver. “Dottie, I said as patiently and casually as I could, “it’s really no concern of yours regardless. Besides, if you’re so worried about their marriage, why don’t you go ask them about it yourself?”

“Did you talk to her husband?”

“He wasn’t there. I told you I don’t know his name.”

Dottie gasped. “Well, I can’t just go up to her already knowing her name when she doesn’t know mine,” she said.

“Oh, don’t worry. I already told her about you and James.”

Just as Dottie was getting worked up, almost screeching in my ear – _Why would you do such a thing like that, Natasha? Who does that? What made you think that that was an okay thing to do? Oh, my goodness, what if she –_ Tony came through the door. I was sitting in the dining room, where our telephone was, but I could hear the door slam shut and his long, drawn-out sigh from the living room. I had a bad feeling about what he was going to tell me and knew that I needed to get off the phone right then.

“Listen, Dottie, I’ve gotta go,” I said quickly, loud enough that she’d be able to hear me over her own voice. “Tony just got home. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” I hung up without waiting for her response.

I didn’t get up from the table for a moment, because I knew that Tony would eventually make his way through the house until he got to me. I briefly wondered if maybe I should have cooked or baked something – maybe his favorite dessert, which was apple pie, one of the easiest things in the world to make; or one of his comfort foods, like mashed potatoes and green beans – just so that he could see that I had actually done something besides going to my clubs, but it was too late for that. I mentally braced myself for whatever he might say: that he’d lost his job, that the company was failing, that his hours were being cut, his research was being rejected, he’d lost his inheritance… anything that might dramatically change our lives for the worse.

I heard Tony call out, “Nat? Where are you, honey?” so I finally got out of my chair and walked into the living room where he was. I wanted to walk slowly, maybe even drag my feet across the floor a bit just to put off hearing the bad news for a few seconds longer, but I didn’t want to annoy him any more than he already was.

When I stepped into the living room, Tony was still standing by the front door, his back facing me. He’d already taken off his blazer and draped it over the back of his recliner, but he hadn’t taken his shoes off yet, which was odd. As he turned to look at me, I fixed my face into an expression of concern and worry, but that quickly changed when I saw the look on his face: he was _smiling_.

“Good,” he said.

“What?”

“You still have nice clothes on.” Tony tossed his keys in the air and caught them in one hand. “Go put some shoes on – one of your fancy pairs. We’re going out.”

My expression changed from concerned to confused. “Why?” I asked. I didn’t make a move to leave the room.

Tony didn’t say anything for just a brief moment, like he was trying to build up suspense, and then he seemed to erupt with excitement. He whooped loudly and started laughing. “I got another raise!” he practically shouted. “Oh, baby, they’re giving me another raise _and_ Dad’s in the process of getting me another share of the company!”

I couldn’t believe it. “Oh, my god, Tony,” was all I could say.

“I know!”

I was still confused, though. Tony had been making a fortune already – his paychecks were always enormous, and the sum of his inheritance had been so large that I had been shocked speechless when we were first informed of it – and in fact, we were one of the wealthiest couples in town, although you wouldn’t have guessed it if you only saw the house we lived in and not the number of zeroes in the bank. I had been raised in a _very_ modest household – which was something that I had been ashamed of and embarrassed about for most of my life – and when I had started dating Tony, I had been blown away by the large house and fancy appliances and cars that his family owned. His childhood home was big enough it could have held half a dozen houses the size of mine, and that alone was enough to intimidate me. When we had gotten married, Tony assured me that he didn’t mind if we lived in a smaller house for a while if it would make me feel more comfortable, but I always knew that he had only said it to make me feel better; I knew that he was just as unhappy where we were as I was, although his reasons were different than mine.

I wasn’t dumb – I knew that a raise meant that Tony would be bringing home more money and the bank account would grow as well. We’d be even richer than we already were, and the thought of that was just… I just couldn’t believe it. I also wasn’t foolish enough to question why he would have accepted a raise when we already had more than enough money to live luxuriously. The memories of the Depression still lingered in the minds of everybody who had been old enough to remember what it was like to not have any money, so the thought alone of a raise was something that even the richest people jumped on – and even though Tony’s family wasn’t hit nearly as hard as the vast majority had been, they still experienced some degree of it, and I knew that he was afraid of it happening again. Money was still money, and everybody felt that there was no such thing as “too much” of it. I, on the other hand, felt like I could have begged to differ.

After I’d gone to our bedroom to get a pair of my “fancier” shoes from my closet, Tony took us out of town to some fancy, expensive restaurant that we had never been to before. He told me that his father used to take his mother there on dates back in the day, and the prices had been high even then. When our waiter came up to us and we started to tell him our orders, I thought to ask him about the prices and actually gasped aloud when he told us. I panicked and desperately tried to convince Tony that we should just go home or find somewhere else to eat, but he disregarded my concerns.

“Get whatever you want, honey,” he said, practically trembling in his chair from excitement. “Don’t you worry about the cost at all.”

Unsurprisingly, our waiter was also quick to ignore my insistence that I didn’t want anything and about fifteen minutes later, he brought our food to the table, including the agonizingly expensive meal that Tony ordered for me. Although I was reluctant to eat something like that, I had to admit that the food was delicious, and it was nice to spend some quality time with my husband. Even though he didn’t work _all the time_ , we still didn’t see that much of each other and our dates had become few and far between by then. Most of the time, we ate at home and never went out in public together, making our time together limited to the evenings, in our bedroom. (And _that_ filled me with shame whenever I thought about it.)

Once we were home, changed out of our dress clothes and into our nightclothes, Tony brought up something that I had known he would bring up from the very moment he had mentioned his raise. I’d known the man for over a decade, so I knew how he was and what things occupied his mind more often than not. I wasn’t surprised, but I was still dreading the conversation.

“How do you feel about buying a bigger house?” he said while I was putting curlers in my hair. He was sprawled out in the middle of our bed like he didn’t have a care in the world – and really, he _didn’t_.

“I don’t know, Tony,” I said from inside the little bathroom connected to our bedroom. I was looking at my reflection in the mirror above the sink, turning my head side to side to make sure I didn’t have any stray hairs out of place before I put my night cap on and turned the light out. I crawled into our bed, going under the covers instead of lying on top of them like Tony was, and reached over to pick up the novel I’d started reading a week before from my nightstand. I didn’t open it yet; I looked at my husband. “I mean, do we really _need_ a bigger house? It’s just the two of us. Isn’t this enough?”

Tony closed his eyes and sighed deeply through his nose. “Do you want to stay here forever?”

He had me there, and I knew he knew it. “No,” I said slowly. “But… a _big_ house? I don’t think that’s necessary. We can just buy another house like this one someplace else.”

“The whole point of _moving_ is to move into a _new_ house that’s better than the one before.” Tony got up from the bed long enough to pull back the covers on his side before he got under them. He propped himself up with his pillows so we were almost eye-level with each other. “Why are you so afraid of big houses?”

I opened my book to the page I left off, refusing to look at Tony anymore. “Who’s going to clean it?” I said, snappy. “It certainly won’t be me. If you think for one second that I’m going to move out to the middle of nowhere, into a _mansion_ , just for you to go off to work every day and leave me behind to c _lean_ and c _ook_ and do nothing but sit around and wait for you to get home all day – you’ve completely lost your mind because that _isn’t_ going to happen!”

“That’s not what I meant at all, Natasha.” I could tell from Tony’s tone that he was getting irritated with me. He spoke a little slower than he normally did and exaggerated his pronunciation of certain words, almost like he was acting as if I was a child instead of his 31-year-old wife. “I just meant, you’re unhappy here, I’m unhappy here, so why are we still _here_? What’s keeping us here besides your—”

“Besides my _what_ , Tony?” I snapped when he stopped talking. I finally looked at him then, angry and upset. I hated when we argued, but it was his fault. This was the same conversation we had had hundreds of thousands of times – and that wasn’t an exaggeration. I knew that he was unhappy where we were, especially since we’d been living there for so long, but _he_ knew how _I_ felt about moving, yet he continued to bring it up time and time again. Deep down, I knew that he just didn’t care how I felt, and I knew that the realization shouldn’t have hurt as bad as it did, especially since it was a realization that I had come to years ago, but it hurt every time I thought about it.

Just as I knew he would, Tony didn’t answer my question. Instead, he threw his hands up in mock surrender and shook his head. “Never mind,” he said. “Just forget it. I don’t feel like arguing right now. We’ll talk about this later.”

“ _Why_ do we have to talk about it?” I demanded. “Why can’t you just drop it? We’ve _talked about this_ every six months since we got married – what more is there to talk about? You know what I’m going to say so why do you still bother bringing it up—”

“I said _forget it_ , Natasha,” Tony said sharply. He rearranged his pillow so he could lay down and turned on his side so his back was facing me. “Just read your book and go to sleep. Goodnight.”

I didn’t do much reading – or sleeping, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finding a decent spot to end chapters is not my strong suit apparently


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it took me FOREVER to get this chapter retyped but i finally got it done! phew

The next morning, Tony left without giving me a kiss. All he did was peek his head into our bedroom and call my name until I woke up, and then said a very quick, “I’m going to work. Bye.” I knew he was still mad at me, and I was still mad at him, but working it out would have to wait until later. I couldn’t exactly stop him from going to work, especially so soon after getting his raise, and I knew that even if I could he wouldn’t have listened to me anyways.

Since it was Thursday, I didn’t have to worry about any club meetings that I was obligated to go to. Sewing Club was meeting up that day, but my attendance was so irregular due to how bad I was at needlepoint and embroidery that I doubted anybody would notice my absence or ask questions if I skipped out, so I didn’t go. Instead, I decided to pay a visit to my mother, who lived several counties over. I hadn’t spoken to her in a few weeks, not because of a falling out – my mother was the person I was closest to in my life; she had been my first friend when I was a little girl and first started to learn what friendship was, and I always felt that our bond ran deeper than just a mother-daughter relationship. I would never let anything come between us, but as time had gone by and I had become more of an adult and more independent from her, more invested in my own life, the number of topics we talked about had gradually dwindled down to little more than our husbands or our lives at home – two topics which had been difficult subjects for both of us.

Despite our close bond, it would be a lie for me to say that we got along well all the time. Just like any other mother and daughter, there were things we disagreed on. She had never been particularly happy that I was unsatisfied with being a housewife, and since she was what I tended to call a “country wife” she couldn’t understand why I was involved in so many activities outside my home – specifically all the clubs I was a member of and what their purposes even were, even though I had explained them to her many times before. She believed that I should have been spending my time doing little more than keeping up with my household chores and cooking for my husband and making sure that his life was as easy and comfortable as it could be, regardless of how tired and stressed it might have made me. Every time we talked about my life, she would always let me know just how much she disapproved of my attitude and didn’t see the point in my “extra activities,” convinced that the only valid reason I could have for leaving the house was to run errands.

It wasn’t necessarily her fault that she felt that way. She had been raised in a household that had been led by the mad of the house (her father), so my mother held the belief that as women, it was our duty to be obedient and submissive towards our husbands. She had tried to teach me to believe the same thing when I was growing up – constantly telling me things like _If you ever want to find a husband, you need to fix that attitude of yours, Natalia Alianovna. Do you think any man would want a wife who won’t do what she’s supposed to do? You need to act more like a proper lady!_ – but I saw the way my father treated her, even when she acted the way she told me I was “supposed” to act, and even at a young age I felt that part of the reason he never changed was because my mother essentially allowed him to get away with how he spoke to her and the things he did, even when they hurt her deeply.

I know she thought I was unaware that there was anything wrong with their marriage; I never outright said anything to her about it, so she had no reason to suspect that I knew. When I was younger, I had been too afraid of what my father was capable of doing to say anything, but as I grew older I realized that it simply didn’t matter if I spoke up about it to my mother or not, because I knew that she knew it was wrong but she still stayed with him and did little to change things.

I made a promise to myself that I would never end up in a marriage like that. By the time I was in my teens I had worked up the courage to tell my mother so, even throwing in a stubborn _If that means I’ll never get married, that’s fine with me_. Although she never expressed it verbally around me (and doubtfully around anyone else either, for that matter), I knew that it made my mother feel hopeless for me, believing that I was destined to live and die as an unmarried woman, thus living an “unfulfilling” life. She hadn’t bothered to even try to hide her surprise when Tony and I got married: she pulled me aside after the ceremony just to tell me that she couldn’t believe I had managed to “find a man willing to put up with me.”

Because she had spent her entire life in the countryside, my mother absolutely despised the suburbs, and so she had only driven out to the house Tony and I lived in one time – and that had been a decade ago; after that, she never came back. I had always been desperate to live in a different setting, surrounded by something other than trees and dirt and more trees, so although I had eventually grown to hate the suburbs myself, I rarely drove out to my childhood home. The distance between us meant that the only means of communication we had was by telephone, so the lack of contact between my mother and I had nothing to do with personal grudges or bad feelings.

I didn’t want to call first, preferring for my visit to be a total surprise for my mother, so I just got in the car and left without making sure that she would be home (but I knew she would – she only ever left the house on Sundays and Wednesday evenings to go to church and bible study). The drive was long and quiet, especially the further I got from my neighborhood and the town, and for once I was able to relax instead of worrying about an errand I needed to run or whether I had forgotten something at home or at the store. For a while, it was almost comforting to watch the change in scenery – from houses that were barely a few feet apart to nothing but woods on both sides of a single-lane paved road and finally to a narrow dirt road that led to the house. But the closer I got, the less relaxed I felt.

My childhood home was a small house that my father built with the help of his brothers a few years before I was born, shortly after he and my mother had married, and once they moved into the house they never left. They were country folks – living in one area their whole lives was something they were happy to do, and it also brought them (and a lot of people like them) a sense of pride to have been able to survive off a single property, rather than having to bounce around from place to place in search of a more thriving area. In the particular area I grew up in, it was rare for a family to move, so I had listened to old neighbors tell stories of their ancestors who had lived on the same patch of land for generations, and I watched as some of them turned elderly and, instead of choosing to move to locations that may have been better suited for them and their personal, they chose to remain in the area and accept whatever their fate might have been waiting for them – such as Mr. Escoe Rhinebeck, who had developed a lung condition over a span of several years and, despite being informed by his doctor that a warmer, dryer climate could have improved his condition, chose to stay in the house he had lived in for over fifty years simply because it was the house he had been raised in and there was nothing in the world that could have made him leave, not even a pair of failing lungs; or Miss Rose Montgomery, whose house had been owned by the same family for half a dozen generations and had already deteriorated to near-ruins several years before her death, and the soil on the property had been used so much that it had become infertile and useless, but because there was so much of her family history attached to the house and the land she stuck around, even when the roof of her house fell in on one side and there was a large hole in the middle of the floor where she fell through one time. My parents, I knew, would eventually become one of those people, having spent their entire lives in one place and never venturing beyond a certain mile radius of their property.

My family’s house was situated far out in the countryside, deep in the woods and miles away from any paved roads or stores. The neighbors were all separated by miles of property; when I was younger, my parents only ever got a chance to socialize with others during church, partially due to the how spread out everybody was in the area (but mostly, my father’s social isolation was his own choice because he was a solo worker; my mother, on the other hand, was forced to be isolated by him). Our closest neighbor had been an elderly widower named Jerry Conwell, but even he lived a good four miles down the little dirt road from us. From what I had been told, he died in 1949 and his house had remained unoccupied afterward: Jerry had been an only child, and his only child hadn’t lived long after being born, so there simply wasn’t anybody for him to will the property to. My mother eventually told me that the house had already started to fall apart and looked like it was on the verge of collapsing entirely – one of the many problems of building a home for yourself using only what you could find in the woods around your property and being too stubborn to ask for help from someone who actually knew what they were doing – but I didn’t know if that was true or not.

It was always a strange feeling for me to return to that place. Every time I would turn onto that little dirt road that I had spent my childhood walking along and memorizing and exploring, I was always struck by how much things had changed since I was there the last time. The old couples I had known as a child were dead and gone, but the houses were still there, some of which had become occupied by a new, younger branch of their family that had taken their place. Other houses were abandoned, particularly the ones that had been owned by the couples who outlived their children and didn’t have any grandchildren to will the place to, making houses that had once been cozy and welcoming into empty shells, falling apart and overrun by weeds and vine and thick, tall grass. I briefly wondered if there were any new children who lived along that road then and if there were any “new” elderly couples who would sit on their porches and call out to them as they walked to and from school, like when I was growing up.

The woods on either side of the road were the same, judging from the looks of things. I knew that if I took the time to look for it, I probably could have found the old stream that ran through the middle of it all, where I used to play with a few of the other kids who lived nearby. We would try to catch minnows and salamanders in the summertime when the weather was warm enough, and during the winter when the temperature dropped low enough to freeze the water, we would test our luck by seeing how far out on the ice we could get without falling in and then sliding on it if it was thick enough to hold our weight. But for all I knew, that stream could have been long gone, dried up and turned into nothing more than a strip of rocks and sand.

When I finally saw the narrower dirt road that was technically my parents’ driveway (but it was actually more like a path that was just barely wide enough for my car to drive down), I turned left onto it and about five minutes later I could see the run-down cabin – which almost looked more like a shack than a house – that I had grown up in. It didn’t look any different than it had the last time I was there: my mother wasn’t that great at keeping the house clean, but she was good at making sure the inside and outside of the house looked the same to reduce the chances of anybody making a comment about it to her. I knew she rarely had visitors, but she was obsessed with keeping up the appearance of a woman who didn’t let things get too out of control with her house.

As the house came into view, I was relieved to see my mother sitting in her little rocking chair out on the front porch. She was peering at my car, obviously trying to figure out who was coming up – it had been so long since the last time I was there, I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t recognize my car anymore. I shut off the engine and stepped out.

“Hey, Mama!” I called. “It’s Natasha!”

“Lord Almighty! Hi, baby!” Mama got up so fast I was worried she’d trip and fall for a moment, and then she was rushing down the porch steps so she could hug me. “What are you doing here? Have you eaten yet? It’s so early, why – it’s so good to see you, sweetheart!”

“I’ve missed you,” I said, my mouth half-smashed against her shoulder. “Let’s go inside, Mama. It’s too hot out here.” And it was – I could already feel my forehead beading up with sweat, and Mama’s hair was soaked, some of it sticking to her forehead and the sides of her face.

She finally let go of me so she could look me in the eye before she frowned. “It’s hotter in the house,” she said. “We still don’t have that… What’s it called? ‘Air condition’ or something, I don’t know.” She waved her hand vaguely and started to walk back up the porch steps so she could sit down in her rocking chair again. She picked up the knitting needles she had dropped. It looked like she was making a scarf, but I knew she wouldn’t wear it – not only was it simply too hot for scarves then, but she had never worn one in her life.

“Oh.” I sighed, disappointed, though I tried not to let it show. The heat was bordering on being unbearable and I desperately wanted to cool down, but I sat down on the porch with her anyways. I scooted the other rocking chair over so that it was closer to hers.

“Why didn’t you call and let me know you were coming?” Mama asked. I would have made us some tea or something.”

I gave her a small smile. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just thought I’d surprise you, I guess. How have you been, Mama?”

“Oh, just fine. I’ve been volunteering more with the church lately. It keeps me busy.” She continued her knitting, only briefly glancing at me. “What about you, sweetheart? Are you still going to those club meetings?”

“Yes.” I sighed. “But sometimes I really wish I didn’t have to.”

“You don’t _have_ to,” Mama said.

“I’m not going to sit around the house and wait for Tony to come home all day.”

My mother only made a small _hmm_ sound, which I knew meant that she wasn’t happy with what I said. “Speaking of Tony,” she said slowly. “How are you and that husband of yours?”

I didn’t want to talk about him or our relationship, much less the argument we were having, but I knew I had to answer her. “We’re… all right,” I finally said.

She didn’t look convinced at all. “Right,” she said in that way that made it obvious she knew I wasn’t be truthful with her. “What’s going on? You two aren’t in financial trouble, are you?”

I didn’t know if she was trying to be funny or not, but I had to laugh at that, just a little bit. My mother knew that financial troubles were unlikely for us. “Nothing like that,” I said, but then I thought about it for a moment. It wasn’t necessarily _trouble_ , but… “Well, actually, he’s getting a raise.”

“Again?” Mama’s eyebrows shot up, wrinkling her forehead. “How many is he going to get?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like he needs one, but… I mean, he’s happy about it.”

“You’re not?” She looked surprised at that. “You _should_ be.”

I knew that, of course. As much as she disliked Tony, I knew my mother was glad that I had found someone rich enough that I’d never have to worry about money or be forced to live like she did; most importantly, I’d never be put back in a situation like the one I came out of. She’d always been afraid of that, always worried that I’d fall in love with a boy who came from a similar background and we’d just be stuck in the cycle of poverty – which is what had happened to my mother – so when I had told her about Tony’s family, I’d never seen her look so relieved before.

“It’s not that I’m _not_ happy,” I said slowly, trying to choose my words carefully. “It’s just… He wants us to move again.” Mama, always able to tell when I had more to say about something, didn’t say a word and patiently waited for me to continue. “He wants a bigger house.”

She scoffed at that, shaking her head. “He wants to move back into that big old house he grew up in.”

“That’s exactly what he wants.”

My mother was starting to frown at the scarf she was making. “That house you two have right now is plenty big enough,” she said, shaking her head and resituating herself in her chair. I could tell she was getting agitated. “There’s no sense in people with money like him always wanting to live like they’re royalty. You knew this would happen someday, right?” She raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at me. “Men like him – they usually don’t stick around for as long as he has, you know. I know it doesn’t seem like it to you, but in his eyes, Tony’s sacrificed a lot for your happiness. You two don’t live like you have money, and there’s not a doubt in my mind that that bothers me. I’m surprised he hasn’t brought this up to you sooner.”

I had never told her that it was a topic Tony and I discussed on a near-regular basis. I trusted and loved my mother, of course, but I just didn’t want to tell her certain things about my marriage, especially since I never knew if she would supportive of my feelings about the issues we had. In a way, it almost felt _wrong_ for me to complain about certain things that Tony said or did, because compared to my parents’ marriage Tony and I had a relationship that seemed to have come from a fairy-tale.

As much as I didn’t want to tell her about it then, I knew that I should. Having spent so long arguing about the same thing time and time again, I knew I needed to at least talk about it to someone else one time. “Actually, he has.” I started to pick at a hangnail so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact with her. “We’ve talked about it a lot. I know how he feels about it and he knows how I feel about it – and that’s why it bothers me so much. He just doesn’t want to hear what I have to say about it, I guess.”

My mother mumbled something under her breath that sounded a lot like _That’s a man for you_ , but I couldn’t tell if she had actually said it or if it was just the heat starting to get to me. I fidgeted some more, uncomfortable both physically and emotionally. I hadn’t come there to complain about my husband or any of my other personal struggles, but once I’d started it felt like I couldn’t stop, almost like a dam broke and all of my feelings just came pouring out faster than I could stop the flow.

“It’s not just about the house issue, either. He just doesn’t care about my feelings in general. Every time he brings it up – brings up _anything_ that we should _discuss_ – the moment I start voicing my opinion or my feelings, he ends the conversation and that’s that. I’ve realized that apparently, when he says we’ll ‘talk about it later,’ he really means that he’s just going to keep ignoring my feelings about something until I give in to what he wants. I have no say in anything, and I feel like that’s what he wants.”

Realizing what I had said, I prepared myself for my mother to side with Tony instead of me – maybe say something about how the reason I don’t have a say in anything is because I’m his wife or that I should be more willing to go with what he wants and forget about the things I might want – but to my surprise, when I finally looked at her, she was frowning so hard her lips looked like a single crack in her face. Her knitting had slowed down as well, but she didn’t stop completely.

“I always knew he’d be like that,” she said after a moment. “When you were growing up, you always told me you’d rather be a spinster than to marry a man who pushed you around. I know you thought you’d found that with him, but I knew… I always thought that he wasn’t good enough for you. It’s always a good idea to marry into money if you can, you know that, so you should be grateful for that much, but I grew up with a few girls who did the same thing you did and they ended up in the same boat you’re in now.”

I was caught off guard by what she had initially said that I didn’t really hear what she’d said after it. _Tony_ wasn’t good enough for _me_? It was rare for someone to think that. It was usually the other way around, especially given my background: I was from a family that was practically dirt poor, on the lowest rung of the ladder in society, so I had always been told that I had nothing to offer a man besides my looks and all I’d ever be able to achieve was being a pretty thing for some rich older man to bring along to fancy parties and boast to his friends about “what a catch” he had. The whole time we were dating and even the first few years after our marriage, I had been constantly reminded to consider myself lucky that Tony had picked me of all people – _I_ even thought I was lucky sometimes, especially early in our marriage when it was still a novelty feeling for me to go to the store and actually be able to afford what I wanted or eat at an expensive restaurant and afford anything on the menu. I was just a trophy wife, meant to look pretty and make him look good whenever we were around others – in particular, whenever we were around his friends and acquaintances. Nobody ever thought that I was _too good_ for Tony.

Once my surprise over that comment had worn off, I caught up to what my mother had been saying. “Tony doesn’t push me around,” I said, not entirely sure why I felt like I needed to defend him against the accusation. “He just doesn’t listen to me.”

“If I know you at all, which I do very well, that counts as pushing you around,” Mama said. I couldn’t tell if that was meant to be another joke, but she wasn’t wrong.

“Another raise means we’re less likely to struggle financially.” I felt foolish saying that, mostly because I didn’t actually think that, but I thought that it might fit my mother’s line of thinking.

“Only if he’s smart with the money.” My mother still had one eyebrow raised higher than the other and was pursing her lips together like she’d tasted something sour, which were the telltale signs that she thought she was making a point. “Don’t you go letting him start investing in junk. That’s how rich people always lose their money.”

“He’s not the investing type.” I didn’t tell her that Tony was just too greedy to even think about spending his money on anything that wouldn’t immediately benefit him, but I had a feeling my mother knew that.

“Still,” she said stubbornly. “If he wants you two to keep living the way you do, he needs to be smart. Even geniuses make foolish mistakes sometimes.”

“I don’t let him, Mama,” I said in an attempt to stop her from going down the path she was going with her comments. I knew she didn’t like Tony and I knew why – I didn’t need to hear about it all over again. In an effort to change the conversation I said: “How are things with the church?”

She was always so easy to predict: my mother took the bait. “Oh, lovely! We have so many things planned. You know, everybody always asks about you. You really should come by sometime and go to bible study with me. Wouldn’t it be nice to see everyone again? Lucille still comes by and I know she’d love to see you – you two used to be close, didn’t you?”

We sat there on that porch for what felt like hours, bouncing from one topic to the next: the church, the weather, my uncle Paul and his young wife Mary and their little boy, the garden my mother had spent so many years repeatedly working on but never could get anything to grow from it but weeds. I didn’t ask her about my father and she didn’t bring him up, knowing that there was a reason I chose to stop by when I did – when I knew he’d be gone, off in god-knows-where with god-knows-who doing god-knows-what, even though he should have been home with Mama.

Around three in the afternoon, I said my goodbyes and headed home, hoping that I would make it back before Tony got off work. I tried to think of something to say that could help us work through our argument again while I drove – _Tony, you know how I feel about this_ or _Let’s just pretend it never happened_ , if the situation reached the point where I needed to pull out the desperate wife card. The thought alone of having to do that made me hope more than anything that I wouldn’t have to; even just thinking about it made me feel degraded and humiliated.

By the time I made the turn into our neighborhood, I was still dreading the conversation that I knew was bound to happen. That feeling of dread only grew as our driveway came into view and I could see that Tony’s car was already parked there – it was apparently much later than I thought it was. It felt like there was a heavy weight in my stomach, almost making me nauseous, and as I parked my car in the section of the driveway next to Tony’s it got worse.

For a long moment I just sat there with the engine off, debating with myself I should go in or not. I was genuinely thinking about just throwing everything away – over a decade of marriage, the wealth I had grown accustomed to, my friends there in the suburbs: everything I had come to know during my marriage – and backing out of the driveway and fleeing back to my parents’ home, even though that meant having to deal with my father all over again. Briefly, I considered the option of going to one of the girls’ houses and staying with them for a while, at least until I could be back on my own, but I didn’t get to make the decision for myself: Tony made it for me.

When I glanced over at our front door, I saw him standing there in the front doorway. He didn’t step out onto the porch, just watching and waiting for me. There was no way I could have sneaked away then, and I knew that I couldn’t have done it anyways, so I reluctantly got out of the car and started walking up the little pathway to our small stoop. I purposely kept my gaze lowered to the ground to avoid making eye contact with him, hoping that if our eyes didn’t meat he wouldn’t say anything to me.

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work. Tony stepped aside to let me into the house and then, once the door was shut behind both of us, he spoke. “Where’d you go?”

“I went to see Mama,” I said, trying to walk into another room as quickly as I could while still being subtle.

“You didn’t leave a note.”

I knew Tony hadn’t meant anything by it, but what he said made me stop and turn around to face him. I instinctively got defensive. “Do I need your permission to visit my own mother?” I snapped.

“It would have been nice to know where you were when I got home so I didn’t sit here wondering—” Tony’s voice started rising before he stopped and sighed loudly, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before lowering his hand to look at me again. “Look,” he said, “I think it’s obvious that we need to talk about last night.” I noticed how tired he looked, with the beginnings of bags under his eyes and faint dark circles.

“What is there to talk about?” I feigned innocence, so reluctant to get into the conversation again that I would have bolted out of the house and out of the _country_ if I could have.

“You _know_ what, Nat,” Tony said, exasperated. “We went to bed angry at each other and we should never do that.”

“ _You_ went to sleep angry at _me_.”

I knew I was pushing my luck by being so confrontational, but I couldn’t help myself. Tony took another deep breath as if to calm himself, but he made no attempt to argue against what I said. “All that I’m asking you to do is just _consider_ the idea of moving, okay? The house doesn’t even have to be huge, but I would _like_ for it to be just a little bigger than this.”

“But why?” I made an arm gesture towards the room around us. “This is more than enough for the two of us.”

“And what about when it’s not just the two of us? What about when there’s three or four or five of us? We won’t all fit in this house.”

I felt my jaw clench at the implication he was making. “Are there _three or four or five of us_ right now, Tony?” I asked, not even trying to stop myself from snapping at him. “No. It’s just _you_ and _me_.”

“I am aware of that, Nat.”

I thought about walking away from him but decided against it. Walking away wouldn’t solve anything and the problem between us would only continue to grow. “I know that you weren’t raised in a house like this so you aren’t used to living in one, and maybe you can’t even imagine someone growing up in this house, but this is the _reality_ for most people, especially around here. There are plenty of rich couples who live here whose houses are just about the same size as ours _and_ they have children. We don’t _need_ a big house to show off how rich you are – everybody in town already knows.”

Toy stared at me for a moment, his expression unreadable. “Is that why you think I want to move?” he finally asked. “To _show off our wealth_? Which, by the way, it is _our_ wealth, not just mine. We’re married, in case you’ve forgotten.”

I rolled my eyes and chose not to respond to that last bit. “What other reason could there possibly be?”

“I’m thinking about our future,” Tony said slowly, doing that thing again where he acted like I was stupid and he had to make sure I could understand what he was saying. “Yes, right now, this house is fine. Like you said, it’s just the two of us here so we don’t need anything bigger than this. But when it’s not just us, when we have some babies running around, we _will_ need one.”

“We can wait until the time comes for that, then.”

Tony made a frustrated sound. “Listen,” he said with a little high-pitched tone, which he always used whenever he was getting irritated with me. “I just want us to think ahead.”

“You just want to raise kids the way you were raised,” I bit out, finally turning on my heel and walking away from him. I headed towards our kitchen, wanting some privacy for just a second. Tony followed me anyways, which didn’t surprise me.

“You want them to be raised the way _you_ were raised?”

I was so shocked by that, it actually made me gasp when he said it. When I whirled around to face him again, I could see that he regretted it – his eyebrows were furrowed and raised slightly and he was already shaking his head – but it didn’t matter to me. He had _said_ it and it couldn’t be taken back.

“Are you serious?” I barely managed to get the words out through my gritted teeth. “Did you _seriously_ just say that?”

Tony didn’t say anything. I scoffed and shook my head. “I think you should leave, Tony.”

“Honey, listen, I swear I didn’t mean it like that—”

“ _Leave_ , Anthony.” My voice was already shaking from how angry and hurt I was. “I don’t care where you go as long as it’s away from here,” I said, but what I really meant was, away from _me_.

Tony didn’t move one way or the other, he just kept standing there in the doorway of the kitchen. He ran a hand through his hair quickly, ruining the grease he’d put in it before he left for work that morning. “Now, goddamn it, we need to talk about this, Natasha!” he suddenly yelled, as if it was _my_ fault that he’d said it.

There had only been a handful of times where Tony had ever raised his voice at me like that, so I wasn’t used to it. I tried not to let it show just how much it shocked – and scared – me to hear him speak that loudly towards me, but I was conscious of the way I had started to tremble.

“We did talk,” I said, hating how quiet and shaky my voice had become from my nerves. “You said what you wanted to say. I think we’ve—”

“Goddamn it!” Tony gritted his teeth and raised a fist before he pointed a finger at me. “I did _not_ mean that and you _know_ it.”

I stared at him. “I know what you _said_ ,” I retorted, trying to act braver than I felt at that moment. “Why would you say it if you didn’t mean it?” I waited for him to answer me but he didn’t. “That’s what I thought. You did mean it.”

“You’re misunderstanding me.”

I wasn’t surprised that he pulled that card – it was his go-to whenever we argued. He would say something that had a very clear meaning, and when I would get upset about it, it was always _You don’t understand. You didn’t hear me right. You’re twisting my words. That’s not what I meant._ I had grown sick of it a long time ago, and just like so many other times before, hearing him say it made me want to roll my eyes so hard they’d roll right out of my face.

“Then please, explain it to me,” I said exasperatedly.

Tony took a deep breath and took longer than necessary to begin talking, and I knew he was trying to come up with something to say – trying to come up with a _lie_. “All I meant was…” he started and then stopped, thinking again. I waited with limited patience for him to spit it out. “I would like for our children to not have to worry about anything,” he finally said. “I don’t want them to grow up worried about food or clothes or anything like that.”

“They won’t grow up like that anyways and you know that,” I said. That was such a weak defense, I couldn’t believe he’d actually tried to use it. “With your money, they’d never have to worry about anything no matter where they grew up. They don’t need a _mansion_ for that.”

“I’m not asking you to pick out a mansion!” Tony said, raising his voice slightly again. “All I’m asking you to do is just _think_ about leaving this goddamn neighborhood. Neither of us grew up here: we have no sentimental ties here, and we both _hate_ it – don’t try to tell me you don’t, Natasha – so why would you want us to stay here? Why would you want to raise our kids here?”

I was so sick of hearing about hypothetical children. “Why do you keep bringing up kids we _don’t even have_? We aren’t parents, Tony!”

It was Tony’s turn to stare at me then. “Are you saying you don’t want kids?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. But we don’t have any, now do we?”

I hated the expression on Tony’s face when I said that, like he was lost and upset. I knew that we were both hurting from our repeated failed attempts at having children. We’d spent the last ten years trying an almost excessive amount of times to conceive, so I knew that it was weighing down on him as well as myself that I hadn’t been able to get pregnant, but as a woman I felt that I had more reason to be upset than he did. Most people thought that it was _my_ fault we didn’t have half a dozen children running around our home yet, that I was somehow doing something to sabotage our chances at becoming parents – and if I was honest with myself, more often than not I thought it was my fault, too. When you’re told something so many times, when so many people around you believe that it’s your fault that something is or is not happening, you tend to believe it yourself. It wasn’t that I felt that Tony didn’t have the right to feel hurt by it, or that it wasn’t his place or anything, but he was a man. I just thought it was different for him.

“We’ll have some.” He said it as a statement, not a question or a suggestion or even a mere possibility, but as a cold hard fact; the way he said it, he knew that it _would_ happen. “And when we do, I want us to have a nice house in a nice, _quiet_ part of the state – not stuck here.”

He had a point, but I felt like he was deflecting. When he had brought it up the night before, he had very specifically said _bigger house_ , not _a house outside of the suburbs._ I refused to back down from that, even though I knew it would only drag out our fighting.

“That’s not what you said, Tony,” I said slowly, carefully. “Last night, you said _bigger_ house. Yes, you know that I grew up in a tiny little _shack_ in the woods,” that was an exaggeration, but Tony had once made the comparison early in our relationship when I’d first brought him to meet my parents, and I would never let him forget that he’d said it, “so you should know that the thought of a house like the one you grew up in… I’m just not used to that, Tony. I don’t think I could ever get used to it. You know that. Think about how often we visit your family – it makes me uncomfortable to be in that house.”

Tony looked like he didn’t know what to say. “I just would like for us to have a bit more space,” he finally said after a long moment. “I have some projects for work that I’d like to be able to bring home so I can work on them here and finish them quicker, but there just isn’t room in this house for it. If we had a bigger floorplan, maybe my mother might be more inclined to come here for the holidays rather than always asking us to go out of our way to their house?” He said the last part like a question, like he wasn’t sure if he was right.

I was tired of talking about it any longer. I was mentally exhausted and wanted nothing more than to just end the conversation right then, so I shrugged my shoulders and sighed. “I’ve said what I needed to say about it. You know how I feel. I wish you’d respect that, but it’s your money. I’m just your wife.”

I didn’t expect him to say anything in response to that, so I wasn’t surprised when Tony just turned to walk out of the kitchen. He stopped just long enough to say, “We’ve been here for ten years, Natasha. I refuse to stay here until I die.” Then he left without saying another word.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you noticed any proofreading errors i missed, please point them out!


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